Chaimae MaananeMost of the people in a time of their life come to face and accept the choice to move somewhere else, take the courage in their hands and pack their bags. Others for some professional or personal reasons find themselves obligated to say goodbye to their friends and family and start a new life kilometers away from where they grew up.
Moving away sounds exotic and exciting, but easy is not the term to define it.
After you settle down, find a place, a job, sign up for classes then comes the hardest part; you realised you are now in a new country surrounded by new people, the shop down your apartment does not know your name, the lady in the apartment across the hall just politely smiles at you without asking how your mother is doing, when you walk down the streets and you see a group of friends laughing you nostalgically smile and you start to feel that you have actually left your home. The good thing is all of those negative thoughts are only temporary, you moved to this new place for a reason, sooner or later you know you will feel as much at home as you did before or even more.
The first thing on your list when you move to a new country, is to try to adapt linguistically. Some people take it easy and learn a few basic words to help them with the everyday routine, others go all-in and try to excel the language by subscribing to some classes. Somehow learning the local language helps you feel at home and connect easily with people, it does not matter if the country is international friendly or not, learning the local language makes the others accept you faster than usual and face the challenges in front of you.
However even though you can speak fluently the local language, unfortunately does not open you all the doors. Building up a social life can totally change your experience abroad. People who succeeded in that field tend to say that it was the best time of their life.
Others face many difficulties when they arrive to a new country . We would like to help all of you a bit along the way, having had the same experience at some point somewhere in the world, and simply making the far away closer to home.
SPEAK is a language and culture exchange that fights intolerance by promoting diversity, creating new networks and sharing languages. Our goal is to avoid that nostalgic sadness and help people enjoy their new adventures by sharing their world.
I would like to participate.
Thanks for getting back to me.
Hello Sabine,
Thanks for your interest. To join SPEAK you have to log in on our website: http://www.speak.social There you can either sign up for languages classes, join as a volunteer teacher and participate to our events.